Publishing Online Part One: Smashwords - Guest Post by Chris Chinchilla [30.06.2010]

There are many options for publishing your print titles and more importantly, getting them distributed online. Some of these I will cover at a later date, but first let’s take a step by step tour through using one of the better all-in-one services, the web service Smashwords.

Smashwords has many positive features including support for pretty much all the major eBook formats including Kindle (.mob), Stanza (ePub) and plain old PDFs. It also distributes to a plethora of stores including what it terms ‘premium stores’ such as Amazon, Barnes & Noble and the new Apple bookstore. However one of its main downfalls is its inability to create eBooks from any format other than word files. For many this may not be an issue, but if you’re creating image heavy titles (such as cook books) it may not be your best option.

Your mission, should you accept it, is to go to Smashwords, register, and then come back to this page…

The first task is to set up the title. Click the ‘publish’ link in the menu bar; more astute readers will notice the three warnings in the green box at the top of the page. I assume and hope we can ignore most of those, but pay attention to the first warning as it will save us a lot of trouble in the long run.

Whilst the Smashwords book converter is pretty solid and does a frankly amazing job at crunching your word file, it requires documents to be laid out in a particular way. But don’t worry! Smashwords produces an easy to understand guide to what it requires. If you still have problems in your document, it tries to tell you what they might be, but not, sadly, what line they’re on.

Have a read of the aforementioned guide, format your document and fill in the rest of the form. Most of it is pretty self explanatory and can always be changed at a later date. When it comes to the subject of price bear in mind that Smashwords takes a very generous 15% commission. While it may also seem strange to offer 50% sampling (what customers can see before they choose to buy the book) this is a usual figure across most eBook suppliers.

Another question that may confuse is the ‘ghost author’; this enables you to set up authors for your titles and you can manage ‘ghost authors’ on the accounts page.

Now that everything is filled in, it’s time to click that tempting ‘publish’ button!

All things going according to plan you will be met with success… but it’s more likely Smashwords will find a problem with your word file (probably with the premium store guidelines). Review your doc and keep uploading until everything flows smoothly. You should now be greeted with the books profile page. There are a bunch of helpful titbits that appear here, such as the number of copies sold, coupon management, print and audio book version links. For further investigations, settings tweaking and a wide variety of other goodies such as coupons, affiliate deals, sales histories and more, take a look at the ‘dashboard’ link.

That’s it for now! Soon your book will be available in dozens of eBook stores, and all without you having to pick up the phone or even leave the comfy chair.

Chris Chinchilla has been a ground breaking eZine writer, indie rockstar, solo troubadour, professional geek, activist, street press writer and much more… He believes in not preaching to the converted and breaking open ideas to make them appealing and accesible to everyone. Now as the new publisher at aduki Independent press he intends to do much the same. Watch this space…

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